The material is CCA – Copper Clad Aluminium as hidden away in the details.
So cold from me

Out of Europe now feet inches and gallons bring em back

Super cold, CCA = crap.

​Take it from an engineer. If it conducts electricity, it will work. Copper, aluminium and gold all have very similar electrical properties. Resistivity is the important value but cross sectional area is heavily weighted in the calculation so just get some thicker stuff and it will sound good.

Is it legal to sell by the foot? doesn't seem an especially great deal tbh.

Out of Europe now feet inches and gallons bring em back

Was Troy ounce in stingray?

The material is CCA – Copper Clad Aluminium as hidden away in the details.
So cold from me

Super cold, CCA = crap.

I bought some of this a while ago, around the same price. Although it's CCA (as most is) it is nice and thick and the resulting sound quality was excellent, even with quite long runs of wire. Recommended.

What (and what kind of) cable do you recommend guys to have v.good quality and as the same good price? Thanks in advance for any answers

Cable quality, but like HDMI argument, marginal difference for the majority of people with average hearing, average house, average AV kit.

Being copper clad aluminium will make no difference whatsoever to audible audio quality. Analogue output and resistance can and has been measured exactly and like any number of other aspects of audiophilia has been demonstrated as complete fiction in the real world. These are tests you can replicate yourself. If you *believe* you can hear a difference, so be it and get whatever suits you. People are happier telling the time with a Rolex over a Timex, equally proven...

1) If you're running long lengths, go up a gauge to account for the difference in resistance.

2) If you're plugging/unplugging constantly, terminate the wire with plugs to prevent wear.

3) If you're running it somewhere that's very difficult to get to in the future get pure copper to save yourself any trouble with oxidation.

Exactly right long length just buy thicker cable, this is still not an amazing deal though

That's a rather unscientific approach. It's a simple comparison of resistance per unit length, where cross-sectional area and material type have equal "weighting". According to the Wiki, aluminium has a resistivity more than 1.5 times that of copper so you'd have to have a cable with more than 1.5 times the cross-sectional area to have the same resistance per unit length.

I spent years working for BT and a ;lot of those years was around replacing aluminium cables for copper cables. Its a terrible material to manufacture cable with.

Yes as it aged it became brittle and was a nightmare to handle, but we were getting problems with it fracturing in lengths of cable that had not been touched.

Cold for me

​look on avforums hundreds of people ask the same question every year.

personally i would spend extra and buy terminated cables to prevent corrosion audiovisual sell different lengths and different terminated ends

​nothing like hdmi argument. a £1 hdmi cable that works is just as good as a £2000 hdmi cable that works. no difference what so ever in quality.

however with analogue signals which this is, cable quality does matter, but that doesnt mean spend £1000 on speaker wire.

you should spend roughly up to 5% of what your system cost overall. 10% maximum, any more and your purchasing snake oil. although cost doesnt correlate with quality its the type of cable you buy that matters. make sure its oxygen free and the purest copper 99.9% copper usually and as thick as you can afford with as many strands as possible. copper clad aluminium is basically cheapest end of the market.

so i have fronts and centre worth £1200, rears worth £400, amp worth £450, sub worth £800 if bought through a distributor. so £3000 system. spending £150 on wiring would be normal. up to £300 for those that want the absolute best.

Some would say £150 on speaker wire is madness :smiley:

thanks OP was actually going to buy this in a week or so

if you dont mind the physical size of cable (because its hidden) you could just use Twin & Earth Cable 1.5mm² x 50m Grey see screwfix for under £20

​if you have a cheap setup then it would be. but for a £3k system it would be normal

Up until a point you're not going to be able to notice the difference. Why is that difference based on a percent of cost spent on the audio equipment?

Jesus Christ it's a £7 roll of speaker cable. If you want audiophile quality cable then pay audiophile prices. The most people who may just want longer cable runs, this will be absolutely fine. Why does every post on hukd get bombarded with experts who want they best for a few quid?

Gold is ridiculously expensive. Aluminium is fragile and oxidises, copper coated aluminium will fail although maybe not in a problem time scale for home audio use. The Chinese also make really crappy copper coated steel cable and some sort of high resistance alloy that looks like copper.

For speaker cable you want copper which means it won't be the cheapest but it doesn't need to be very expensive either.

Nowadays it is hard to know what you are buying. The Amazon listing doesn't even mention what the cable is made from, a review says it is copper coated aluminium so I would avoid.

It plainly states it.... its still rubbish though.
From the listing:
The material is CCA – Copper Clad Aluminium. The surface of the cable (where the data transfer takes place) is copper, but the base metal is aluminium.
Connects audio speakers to your A/V receiver to amplifier
Includes a plastic spool for easy and convenient installation
White line on insulated jacket denotes polarity of wires
Box Dimensions:13 cm (L) x 8.71 cm (W) x 13.79 cm (H)

​well you dont know much about audio clearly.

with audio everything in the chain should be equal in terms of quality to get the best out of it.

for example in my headphone setup i have a £120 dac, a £120 amp and a set of £200 headphones. they are all equally matched and pair well.

i wouldnt for example use a £120 amp with a £500 dac or a £20 dac. same foes for my £120 dac. i wouldnt use it with a £500 anp or a £20 amp. i wouldnt be getting the best out of the £500 piece in the chain and the £20 piece wouldnt make the best of the other parts of the chain.

then you have source quality, digital music cd would be better than mp3 which is better than radio, etc.

no point having a £500 headphobe setup to listen to the radio for example. as you wont get the best out of it.

so to get the best out of a speaker system you need to wiring which is relative to the cost of the system.

no point using £150 wiring for £99 set of speakers. the same way there is no point using £7 wiring for £3000 set of speakers.

you need to pair everything up and match it well.

like you wouldnt run a bmw m5 on asda 91 ron unleaded. you would want to use a premium 97-99 ron fuel to get the best from the car.

however if you have a 1.2 corsa asda fuel is perfectly fine probably recommended.

its all relative. if you have a cheap setup use cheap wiring. if you have a more expensive setup use more expensive wiring.

I have added this info to the OP now :smiley:
I was on the phone when I posted the deal so it wasn't convenient to copy / paste

​who is wanting the best for a few quid? all we are saying is this is very basic wiring and wouldnt suit mid to high end setups. its perfectly fine for cheap setups if your amp and speakers cost less than £150 altogether then this will pair well with it.

however i just returned 100m of what was advertised as pure copper but turned out to be copper clad aluminium for a full refund.

im looking for multi stranded 2.5mm minimum of at least 99.9% pure copper and roughly 100m of it.

the stuff from tlc direct is cca, they have changed suppliers and not been able to update their website. so if anyone knows where i can get that elsewhere for cheap let me know.

tlc has it advertised for less than £50 elsewhere your talking 2-3 times as much. pity they changed supplier as their cable was the best deal going

While you only think you do, just about everything you have said is drivel.

I thought I had searched the page for the word copper and didn't find it till the reviews. I now see it in a details sidebar which looking like advertising spam I would surely have ignored without the search.

Why are you using a percentage of the total cost to determine cost spent on speaker cable, it really makes no sense.
What about speaker sensitivity, power output, or ohm rating, or even speaker from amp distance? Does none of this matter, just the cost spent on the audio equipment?

DAC's are the same. Up until a point, the audio isn't going to sound better, different maybe, but not better. It's like saying £200 headphones wouldn't work great with a £60 DAC because the headphones cost £200. Or that beats headphones are better than £150 headphones because they cost £50 more. There's some really good DAC's out there for around £60. Does that mean your DAC is 3x as good? Probably no where near.

sure it is. i bet your a qualified sound engineer too.

i think I'll trust my own ears, I've personally tested over 20 DAC/AMP's for headphones ranging from £20 all the way up to £800.

I have also tested the difference lower resistance wiring makes with headphones too. for example the fidelio x1's it's highly recommended you change the stock wire and many owners have done so, have a look on head fi. i bought a lower resistance wire for my pair and it made a noticeable difference, not huge but you should never expect huge differences with wiring, just slightly cleaner sound. this is why i recommend spending 5% and 10% max. spending more is pointless.

you wouldn't spend £100 on a wire for a £150-£200 headphone. £10-£20 is perfectly adequate and a noticeable upgrade over stock.

the same basis i base my speaker wiring costs on from my own personal testing of multiple headphones. I have around £3K+ worth of headphones and headphone equipment too. HD600, HD700, HD558, HD25-1 II, Momentums, Q701's, DT770's and owned plenty others in the past too

I can assure you I know what I'm talking about when it comes to what makes a difference in terms of sound quality, i've tested and owned enough equipment to make a well formed opinion.

as with everything there will always be anomalies. i'm stating that as a guide.

for example is a £1.8 million aston martin really 6-10 times better than another aston martin? no it isn't due to law of diminishing returns.

people should use that as a guide to guide them roughly how much they should be looking to spend.

Now you're comparing the audio fidelity difference by using a car as the analogy. Clutching straws springs to mind.

believe what you like. if your happy to use CCA then do so. i've tested steel, CCA and pure copper and i noticed a difference with my ears.

however those with cheap equipment or bad hearing may not be able to notice a difference.

i personally wouldn't buy CCA, in fact i returned cable which was mis-sold as pure copper which turned out to be CCA by tlc direct.

my hd25-1 II's have steel cable in them to increase their longevity, i replaced them with copper and the difference isn't huge but it was enough for me to keep the copper cable.

I never once said CCA is good enough. Not once.

Personally I'd spend just a little bit more and get solid copper 13 strand speaker cable from TLC for £8.99 plus vat for 100m roll. Yes it's the thin stuff but it's probably fine for most people and probably mechanically and electrically better than this CCA cable. Or get the 42 strand solid copper speaker cable from them for £19.95 plus VAT

Certainly CCA network cable is known to potentially have connectivity issues with longer runs but no idea about speakers but for me, I'd not want to run a cable underfloors that could have problems longer term.

​oh my days, a £200 hdmi cable is overkill, however, there really are differences in the £25 cables compared to £1 cables.

​I know people that only ever use cheap fuel.

Also, with the headphones, doesn't it make a difference if listening to dab radio

I have an old rotel system and use cable I bought 22 years ago, still sounds good enough to me. years ago I had a Sony stack changed the speakers for some kef koda 7 and sounded great. Same cable I use today, don't remember the price but it wasnt expensive. Remember updating a hifi sales guy by telling a mate the hifi didn't sound very good. He was top transfixed on the price and name.

​thay are all cca from tlc. they have changed suppliers and they cannot update their website apparently. email them if you want to check. i would avoid them

​do they drive a car that warrants premium fuel? cheap fuel is fine for standard cars. performance vehicles require premium fuel

​not in picture or sound quality. build quality yes but you can always buy another £1 cable when it breaks

As many strands as possible eh? This just shows how you have swallowed the marking bull and are passing it through your system to emit it once again. Not only has the real phenomenon of "skin effect" been applied incorrectly to audio frequencies, unless all these strands are insulated from each other they will act like one large strand anyway. You've been had.

Yep - absolutely true - snake oil is very prevalent in the "HiFi" arena....

Digital cables can be any quality and the output will be the same but speaker cable being analogue needs to be good quality, especially if the distances are longer. At the very least it should be pure copper and a thicker gauge.

Oh ok thanks for that! I got some a while ago and it was solid copper (runs off to double check!) - but that's not good if their site isn't updated to reflect the change.

can someone therefore recommend an affordable alternative then please
ta

​there is thing called google. all you need to type into is audio specialist and you will find the top retailers

If you do that you will find people trying to sell you oxygen-free multi-strand cable which has no advantage over mains cable.

Absolutely incorrect. There is a very common, but fundamental misunderstanding that "digital" signal transmission will either work or it will not with nothing in between. Digital signals are also subject to degradation, just in different ways than analog. Modern digital system that are susceptible to bit errors (e.g. from crap cables, or RF interference) will be designed to degrade as gracefully as possible. Cheap/bad HDMI cables will often give a watchable picture with visible noise artefacts.

As a sound engineer ive installed miles of speaker cable in clubs pubs and factories and what we tend to use is .75mm twin cable, its nice and cheap and works great we've run 100s of miles of the stuff and it works great for long runs, for short home runs you could use .5mm its thinner and easier to hide. People spout complete **** about speaker cable i do it for a living and have done for years and my boss has been doing it for over 30 years, you dont need £10 a meter cable as it will sound just the same as 25p a meter cable its just like the nonsense about Hdmi cables a pound cable works just as well as a £40 one. You can buy a 100 meters of .5mm cable for the same price as this 3x the amount and it will be better.